Crowdsourced Agenda for Free Expression

Search form

Internet Town Hall

INTERNET TOWN HALL

On November 28, 2013, as part of our outreach to engage people with the drag-and-drop crowdsourcing tool, we hosted an Internet Town Hall. The town hall helped to educate our Canadian supporters on copyright in an open and interactive forum, and give our supporters a chance to ask their questions about free expression and the TPP.

We promoted the town hall online through our website and through social media on our Facebook and Twitter accounts. Hosting the town hall on Google Hangouts allowed the event to be advertised on Google’s Hangouts page and garnered interest through Google’s own web traffic. We also sent targeted outreach emails to our Canadian supporters who had already engaged in at least one copyright- related action. People were encouraged to participate before the event and to submit questions through Twitter and our website, and at start time, we had already received about 150 comments and questions about our town hall and copyright.

Internet users were drawn in by the chance to talk about copyright in a comprehensive manner, and our participatory format allowed individuals to submit personal and detailed questions on international and Canadian copyright regulations.

Given that the townhall was particularly focused to a Canadian audience, it is unsurprising that the overwhelming majority of views - i.e. 88 percent - came from Canada. But, since copyright is a global issue, we also had significant international viewership, with 5.7 percent (27 views) coming from the United States, and about 3-4 views from the following countries: the UK, Costa Rica, New Zealand, Mexico, Japan, Sweden and Australia.